76 March — Changes in Foregrounds. 



XV. 



Perceptible Changes in Foregrounds — Honeysuckle — Yellow Iris — 

 Furze — Soapwort — Arum — The Names of the Periwinkle in dif- 

 ferent Languages — The unfortunate English name, Periwinkle — 

 Brilliant Contrasts in early Spring — Viburnum — Spindle-tree — 

 Precedence of Leaf or Flower — Hawthorn and Blackthorn — Oak. 



ALTHOUGH there is nothing at this early season 

 which shows from a distance like the willow, 

 whose silvery catkins and tiny nascent leafage have 

 really an importance even in the general landscape, 

 still the foreground is beginning to decorate itself with 

 leaves that count for something, even before they are 

 fully grown or accompanied by their sweet sisters, — 

 the flowers. The very tardiness of some plants gives 

 greater consequence to those which precede them by a 

 few weeks ; for instance, the honeysuckle is a more im- 

 portant hedgeplant in March than it is two months later ; 

 for when the hedges are bare of every thing but a few 

 incipient buds of thorn, or wide-apart scattered little 

 leaves of eglantine, it is a great thing to find the soft, 

 rather dark-green leaves of honeysuckle quite rich and 

 abundant, so much more abundant as it seems to us 

 than even in the height of summer, when they are lost 

 in the general profusion, and only the flowers attract 

 us by their color or their perfume. So by the edges 

 of streams, although the yellow iris is a fine attractive 

 plant at all times when it is visible, and most especi- 



